For the first time in 44 years, China qualified into the final round of the Soccer World Cup (held in Korea and Japan in 2002).  This has been a big deal for the ever growing Chinese soccer fans.  As a result, it was listed among the three most important events in 2001 for China.

I loved watch soccer games and cheered on the Chinese national team as a child, though also experienced many heartbreaking loses.  Chinese soccer fans all know what "black 3 minutes" or "black 9 minutes" means.  Then here is the big deal for China, we are finally in the world cup!  So a trip to Korea seems suddenly meaningful and exciting.  After hours of planning and days of eagerly waiting for the world cup tickets from FIFA, we (my friend Li and I) were finally on the way to Korea, where China will play all three of the group C matches.

June 2nd, Seoul
Here we are, Korea!  The plane landed in Inchon International airport (Inchon is also famous for other reasons).  And I'm suddenly walking in an unknown country, though the people there look very alike Chinese.  Li's roommate's brother, Ben, greeted us at the arrival hall.  And we are off to the motel we'll stay for tonight.  Ben is extremely friendly and helpful to us, he helped us reserve hotel rooms and plane tickets ahead of time, also planed out our visit in three different cities in Korea, not to mention the lift to the hotels.  That is so great, makes me believe there are nice people in the world.. 

During the deadly 11 hour flight to Inchon, I fought probably ten street fighting battles (as in Nintendo games)  and watched 2 movies and also played 10 card games with my friend.  Now that I'm in the car, I feel really sleepy.  And the next moment I wake up, I'm in front of the motel-the "Good Time Motel."  We stayed on the top floor-#13.  Though I was too sleepy at the time to notice that there is no 4th floor.  It seems that we need a dinner before falling into bed, so Ben took us to a nice small Korean restaurant.  Li and I ordered some food, very red looking.  It was so spicy!  As a remedy, we ordered another bowl of, errr, water.  After postprocessing the food in the water, it's actually quite tasty.  We took a little walk afterwards, just to know the area a bit.  I'm delighted to have found a PC room, which resembles a PC lab in US.  I was able to check e-mail, that's nice, feeling I'm still in tough of the world that I'm familiar with.

June 3rd, transition from Seoul to Gwangjou
We had McDonald's for breakfast, a decision backed up by unanimous votes after last night's experience.  It's great that the cashiers understand the combo numbers we ordered, and also the names of the drinks.  We then headed to the train station, where we will go to Gwangjou for the China-Costa Rica game.  The train station is comparable to the train station in the New York City.  It's like a big mall and lot of stores, though the one we decided to visit was KFC, where we had lunch.  The ride is about four and half hours, quite a long journey.  We killed most of the time by playing cards.  I must have good luck on the train, because the scores went from 2-4 to 11-6, in my favor finally.
Arriving at Gwangjou station gives us immediately warm feeling.  There are volunteers (Chinese students from the local university) stationed there and we received a warm welcome and lots of maps/visitor guides.  Also for the first time we met other "crazy" Chinese soccer fans, and we all headed to the Grand hotel.  At night a bunch of fans gathered in a Chinese restaurant for dinner and the same time watched the Brazil-Turkey game.
Then we all went to a free concert, a lot of (mainly) Korean and Chinese pop singers.  We stayed for the first half.  It was great music, I liked it much.  The second half was less interesting, I actually fell asleep during the heavy metal songs.  So we decided to leave and have an early sleep for tomorrow's match.

Pictures: Train, Concert, Streets at day and night, and World Cup Logo.

June 4th, the first match
Waking up today, it was a good feeling, for I'm going to see the world cup game in the afternoon.  In the morning, we wandered around streets, trying to find a place for breakfast.  Instead, we found an Adidas shop that sells official Chinese national team jersey.  So I got one and happily forgot about my growling stomach.  For lunch, we tasted the famous ginseng chicken soup.  Sooo delicious, also seems much needed energy for the upcoming match.
The stadium is gorgeous, and we anxiously seated and waited for the match.  Happily, we saw a huge Chinese flag being carried around the stadium.  The crowd shouted when the players took the field and I used my binoculars to have some closed up look on some famous players, oh, and the famous coach-- Bora Milutinovic.
The game started slowly, with first half score 0:0.  We consumed lots of water, since both the sun and the shouts drained fluids out of us so quickly.  But it was disappointing that China lost 0:2 at the end.  Before the game there was hope that China may qualify for the second round, afterwards I quickly adjusted my mission to be just enjoying the world cup.  The national team still needs time and skill and experience.

Pictures: Stadium, Stadium inside, Fans, and Teams.

June 5th, transmission from Gwangjou to Sugwipo
The morning seems a bit gloomy, we again walked the street, not brave enough (or just being too sad) to wear the Chinese team jersey.  I got a strawberry sundae from KFC to cheer myself up.  We went to the airport afterwards, for we are heading to Korea's southern island-Jeju.  We spent quite some time in the airport, watching time delayed soccer matches.  The flight is only about 1 hour, and to my surprise the plane is actually quite big, about 10 seats per row.  A lot of Chinese soccer fans on the plane, though everybody is a bit quiet, not too much discussion about the match yesterday.
Arriving at Jeju airport, we went to the tourist information center to collect more maps.  Then we hopped on a bus to go to the hotel.  It took us 70 minutes-the airport is at the north of the island, while the stadium and hotel are at the southern shore of the island.  At the Koreana hotel we decided to stay in the Korean style rooms, where there is no bed, and everybody sleeps on the floor (at winter time there is fire underneath and the floor is heated).
This is also the point where the mosquitos started their massive attacks on me.  Having grown up in Shanghai, every summer I suffer from mosquito bites, and Jeju island just reminded me once more what it feels like.  Though I suspect the mosquitos are being nice to me since I'm officially the guest of the country.
Late that night we had a really good dinner at a Korean restaurant.  We had BBQ and seafood clay pot.  It is a bit weird to sit on the floor and eat, and my flexibility has gone south, so I kept on shifting positions.
The Koreana hotel also has a computer set up in the lobby, so more Internet access to me.  And it is also when Li discovers how many hours a computer science student can spend each day just surfing the web (Oh, I also did some work, I sent some research related emails during my trip and read a paper, seriously).

Pictures: Korean meal, and Koreana Hotel

June 6th, Site seeing in Sugwipo
Today we are free, no matches to go to.  Also in the morning we discovered that either of us actually eats breakfast regularly while in States, though we've been eating breakfast each day.  We quickly degraded to drink milk in the morning only, which is more accessible via a convenience store next to the hotel.  After the energy boost in the morning we visited two beautiful waterfalls.  One of them is right off the cliff and goes directly into the sea.  Upon crossing a stone bridge, there is a fortune basin where people try to throw coins into, for it will grant one wish for every coin.  Urged by my friend, I threw one coin, and it magically fell in the middle!  Yet I forgot to make a wish, oh well.
Then in the afternoon we went on a underwater marine tour.  We first took a boat, then exchange to a submarine, right next to the mosquito island (how proper, I thought).  Then we got to see tones of corals, fishes, all with spectacular color.  The submarine dived to about 25 meters underwater, no shark attacks.
At night we went to a festival square to see some Korean dance performance.  Instead we went into a restaurant on the second floor and watched the performance from there.  Couldn't make too much sense of it.  There seems to be a goddess in the middle, who gets up and down, and the rest of the people just kept on bowing to her.
That night was also very crazy.  There were Slovenia fans checked in also and they were making so much noise at the middle of the night.  Must be the world cup.

Pictures: Water falls 1, 2, 3, Making a wish, Fortune basin, and Mosquito island.

June 7th, The beach
There was a movie named "the beach."  But our experience was very pleasant.  We first went to see some rocks along the shore, which are special shaped because of the volcano explosion (Did I mention that Jeju is an volcano island?) long, long time ago.  Then after the site seeing the taxi driver is long gone and we walked 30 minutes before caught an taxi to the ZhongWon beach.  There the sun is perfect shining and the sand is so warm.  The water is crystal clear, and the Hyatt is right next to the beach (where the Chinese national team stayed.  No, I didn't go and ask for autographs from players, when they play better maybe).  In the afternoon we decided to go and see another festival, the seven goddess festival.  I also walked around the streets near the festival and successfully found a postal office.  I got some nice postcards, and also met a fellow Chinese soccer fan in the postal office.  He lives near New York city and is also a crazy fan like me who flew thousands of miles just to see the national team lost.

Pictures: Rock, Beach, Post Korean meal, BBQ pork, and Fortune fountain.

June 8th, Got to see the Brazil team play
The game is in the evening so that means more site seeing during the daytime.  We decided to visit a folk village to the east of the island.  It is the best preserved folk village and it is indeed so.  The housing there is really cute, though sometimes we also see car garages right next to the shed, which really makes a funny contrasts.  We had lunch there-the famous black boar BBQ.  I had the task of filming Li eating lunch, that was quite funny.  Anyway, I gave several close up shots of Li chewing on the meat, hehe.
And then it's match time.  We went there a bit early, just celebrated together with Brazil fans outside the stadium.  We bought this match's tickets on the black market, since the tickets was sold out officially.  Unfortunately we had to sit with Brazilian fans.  But fortunately no confrontation ever took place, we took turns shouting slogans supporting either the China or the Brazil team.  Though they got up four times to celebrate the goal, and we, err, just sat there with nothing to celebrate.
China was losing already 0-3 at the half time.  We got depressed and bought some huge bags of snacks during the half time.  Then in the second half, we just kept our teeth busy by chewing on the snacks.  China almost scored one goal in the second half, almost.  The shot hit the right post-it was that close!
After the 0-4 defeat a consolation dinner is much participated.  We went to one of the restaurants that we tried earlier, and there it was filled with Chinese soccer fans.  Many are drinking beers and making jokes about the loss-afterall, Brazil is such a powerful team.  Only one more game left, one more chance to score a goal, go China!

Pictures: Folk village 1, 2, Black boar (I hope it wasn't our lunch),  Stadium, Fireworks, Fans, and Teams.

June 9th, Back to Seoul
Today we are going back to Seoul, where China will play Turkey.  The flight is in the evening and so we still have the day to kill.  We decided to visit more places around the airport.  There is this SanXingXue (three-name cave), where supposedly the ancestors of the Jeju people originated from.  The legend goes-Long long time ago, a lighting from the sky stroke the ground and three people (gods) emerged from three caves in the ground.  And then they lived happily for a while.  Until one day, a boat from the kingdom of "blue-waves" came to the shore.  And the King of the "blue-waves" sent three of his daughters to marry the three guys (life cannot get better than this).  And so they wed and split the island into three regions and lived happily ever after. 
We also visited some museums and the Dragon rock along the shore.  Dragon is an imaginary animal and is warshipped by many oriental countries.  In the afternoon we sat in a restaurant and ordered the beloved Abalone porridge again, that is delicious, ranked #2 among our favorite Korean food (next to the ginseng chicken soup).  Then we revisited the airport.  It was crowded with soccer fans and other fans.  A lot of teenage girls were stationed around the airport waiting for their favorite singers to show up.  And so we were quite amused by such scenes-a crowd of girls shouting and screaming and chasing (physically chasing) some cool looking dude.   We also watched the Turkey-Costa Rica game.  Theoretically, until that point, China still has a chance of advancing to the next round, if Turkey beats Costa Rica 1:0 AND China beats Turkey 1:0 AND Costa Rica lose to Brazil 3:0.  But Costa Rica fought to the end and equalized with a late goal.  So China is out, technically, on June 9th.

Pictures: Cave, More rock, and Dragon rock.

June 10th, The Korea-US game
We slept late today, for the lack of energy and events.  But we decided to go and see the Korea-US match in the city hall square, where thousands of Korean fans will be cheering on their nations team.  We travelled via subway-the very convenient transportation in Seoul.  By the time we got to the square there were already fans in Red everywhere 2 hours before the match.  Though the sky was very dark and cloudy-a thunderstorm is on its way.  The fans were practicing chantings, and we actually understood what they were chanting, in Korean!  Actually Korean is close to Chinese, some words have very similar pronunciations.  With the thunderstorm looming, I decided to escape the frenzy and go back to hotel to enjoy the match in a dry condition.  And it turns out I made a wise decision, for it started raining heavily after I returned to the hotel.  Li returned shortly after-kind of wet.  It was also a good decision, for an umbrella was bought, and was proven to be the most useful on another rainy day.

Pictures: Korean fans @ city hall square.

June 11th, The sightseeing in Seoul
Today we definitely needed something to kill time.  We decided to go local sightseeing in Seoul.  Seoul has some of the oldest palaces in Korea, and so we thought we pay them a visit.  The weather is nice, thankfully.  KFC proven to be once again our lunch saver (there was a rumor that KFC moved its headquarters' to Shanghai, not sure if this is true).  Ha, I won't be missing KFC for a very very long time.  The palaces are neat, though I don't recall all the names now.  One of the funniest thing I thought was the name for the King and Queen's residence--They named it the "great creation hall." :)  The blue roof is reserved for the King's residence-nobody else can use this color (though we saw tons of blue roofed houses now in Korea).  The officials are classified into 9 classes and they have to stand/kneel in a particular order, when waiting to see the King.  Li was commenting that these palaces are no matches compared to the ones in the forbidden city in Beijing, but I can only imagine.  One of these days I'll visit Beijing and go sightseeing there, Great Wall will be a must.
That evening, we had the pleasure to meet Ben's family for dinner.  It turns out that this is a quite interesting family.  The father apparently was the former minister of agriculture in Korea, also president of a college and now CEO of a company.  He had his private driver pick us up.  For a while, we were riding in this very windy and tiny road to the restaurant (which is very authentically Korean btw), giving the funny thought that perhaps we were kidnapped and were about to be driven to a remote place and to be sold for a good price.  But the dinner was very very nice, one of the best among my 14 days in Korea.  The father also gave a speech on his view of western and eastern philosophy (the whole family practices Bhutism), casually, after dinner, :).  Such a wonderful family, I'm so happy to get to know them.

Pictures: Grand gate, Chimney, Great creation hall, The only blue roofed Building, Waiting area, and Door of forever happiness.

June 12th, More sightseeing in Seoul
The match is not until tomorrow, so we decided to visit more palaces in Seoul.  There is a tour bus that goes around the city and stops at various places.  So we hopped on and enjoyed a nice tour of Seoul.  The bad thing is that it was raining off and on.  We had one weapon though-the umbrella Li bought the other day.  And then we spent the rest of the day predicting thunderstorm patterns--when we see it's going to rain really heavily, we quickly find some place to hide, and rest of the times enjoyed little walks in the light rain.  I have to say that the buildings/temples have a nice feel to it under the rain-everything is painted over with a sheet of moisture.  I enjoyed most just sitting in some little temples, listening to music and seeing the rain fall.  I haven't had time to enjoy nature for a very long time--buried too much in paper and pencil doing research I guess, or the city life.  Though with rain, coldness is unavoidable, I happily returned to the hotel earlier to catch a much needed afternoon nap.  The evening, we went to a restaurant nearby, after spending 20 minutes down the hotel reception desk figuring out how to call a taxi to get there.  We had chicken soup again, very delicious, though not as good as the first time.

Pictures: A nice hall in the rain, Qinghua tai (the place to greet foreign country leaders), and A nice temple (forgot its name).

June 13th, China's final game in world cup (in many years to come)
Today we are all very excited, for China is playing Turkey this afternoon.  At this point, we are still happily cheering the Chinese soccer team, although a win would seem really a miracle.  The Chinese Soccer Association set three achievements for the national team: One goal, One tie, and One win.  (Ok, at least they were wise enough not to include qualifying for the second round,)  Though I think it's OK to have dreams, yet one just has to be prepared for the worst outcome.  During the match, the most chanted slogans by the Chinese fans were "Score one goal."  And the Chinese team came very close to that-the shot by Yang Chen hit the left pose-and that's as close as China can get in scoring.  It also seemed to me the officiating was in question during this game.  Late in the first half, a Chinese player fell down inside of the restricted area, but instead of a penalty kick, a yellow card was "awarded" to China for diving.  Earlier in another group match Turkey was unlucky as well against Brazil, for a penalty kick awarded to Brazil which should have been a direct kick.  The second half, there were even more questionable calls that could have went either way.  In retrospective point of view, I probably shouldn't have cursed at the referee, but I think the referee definitely received some well deserved "Boo"s.  And when it's game over for China, we are still scoreless, 0:3.  China's run at the world cup comes to an end.  It was kind of disappointing, on the other hand, I'm glad that I come to see the world cup, that's an awesome experience.  Hey, China will be back! (errr, ok, maybe it will take a few more tries.)

Pictures: The same fan in red, and Teams.

June 14th, Bye-bye Korea
Today we are leaving for US.  The flight is in the afternoon, so I decided to go shopping a little bit.  I went to the Nan Da Men market-probably the biggest market in Seoul.  The market is very similar to the ones in Shanghai, reminds me very much of Chen Huang Miao.  Though I wasn't brave enough to try the dim-sum posts off the streets, but they look so yummy.  I bought two pairs of chopsticks and spoons-in Korea, all the chopsticks in the restaurants are made of metal, which I'm very fond of, for they test great chopstick-control skills.  Then Ben kindly drove us to the airport, there we had a farewell lunch together at a Chinese restaurant.  Afterwards it was the wait for the plane, I again played some more card games with Li, but at that point I was loosing badly.  I don't remember exactly how many sets of games we had played during the whole trip-but vaguely the score was 30 some to 20 some, with me loosing.  Then we are back on the plane, enjoying the fine service provided by the Singapore flight attendants, all in very beautiful cultural dresses.  Bye Korea, I hope one day I'll visit you again.  Bye world cup, I hope next time China will win a game, and I can go crazy celebrating (I'm sure the stadium would have "exploded" if China had scored one goal).